In 1937, two years before they declared war on the western world, the Nazis declared war on modern art — which they classed as “Entartete Kunst,” — or, in English, “degenerate art.”
Not content with merely sniping at modernism in the press, the Nazis launched a “Degnerate Art” exhibition — or, rather, a sort of anti-art exhibition — featuring modernist works by an assortment of famous and not-so-famous artists, including Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, and Pablo Picasso. The idea was to show how self-evidently terrible this art was, and how its very existence was an affront to the good German people.
Now a self described “Classical” art teacher named Megha Verma has launched her own little war on “degenerate art.”
Given that she teaches art history, and is confident enough to describe herself as an arbiter of “Beauty, Truth and Virtue,” it seems exceedingly unlikely that Verma wasn’t aware of the “Degenerate Art” exhibit and the fascist connotations that now stick to the word “degenerate.” And if she didn’t know that “degenerate” has become something of a fascist dogwhistle, well, plenty of people in her mentions have spelled it out for her, and she has not backed down from her use of the word, even though she seems to consider herself a monarchist (or perhaps a mouse supremacist) rather than a fascist.
In recent years, contemporary Nazis (and the Nazi-adjacent) have glommed onto this word as one of their favorite insults, whether they mean to align themselves with the Nazis old or new, or if they use it because everyone else (in their right=wing bubble) uses it.
They’re especially fond of applying the word to LGBTQ+ people; this is certainly something they share with the OG Nazis.
They especially like using the word for trans people (and the occasional hockey league).
Other favorites include women having sex:
Women NOT having sex:
Black people (click to see the tweet in context):
People who get abortions:
And then, of course, there’s the Walt Disney Corporation, which one commenter wants to destroy with nuclear weapons.
These are the people you’re getting in bed with if you use the word “degenerate.” Unless you’re reclaiming the word for yourself just to stick it to the Nazis and the Nazi-adjacent. Then it’s kind of cool.
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The only gang graffiti I’ve seen in my area was a short-lived XIV on a retaining wall. Which was painted over quickly and then someone spray-painted a spray can (meta!)… and Hello Kitty.
Hello Kitty stayed up a LOT longer, being that I guess the city didn’t consider her threatening. Took them months to paint that over, and we were sorry when they did. It made a great landmark. Plus I got to frequently say “Does Hello Kitty need to cut a bitch?”
@ gss ex-noob
There was a particular bit of graffiti in my home town that became a bit iconic.
http://bancroftsfromyorkshire.blogspot.com/2018/02/its-mean-old-scene.html
There’s even a song about it.
Unless you’re reclaiming the word for yourself just to stick it to the Nazis and the Nazi-adjacent. Then it’s kind of cool.
Hey, that sounds like a good idea! Maybe instead of the Mammoths, the collective noun for us commenters can be the Degenerates. Or the Degenerate Mammoths. LOL this made me laugh so hard. Plus it kinda sounds like Ellen (DeGeneres) the late* queer icon.
*Not dead, but after the reveal that she’s actually a racist jerk I can never watch her show again.
@Alan,
Alright, I’ll bite. Who painted those four paintings? I don’t recognize them enough to really have a guess as to who created them.
(Unless those were Hitler’s work?)
@ redsilkphoenix
Yup.
Hitler was quite prolific. There are at least 300 confirmed paintings; and it’s believed he painted at least 600 and possibly nearly a thousand.
I don’t think it would be unfair to call them kitschy; but that sort of thing was very popular with the German lower middle classes. So if your goal is primarily financial rather than creative then I can see why he would just churn them out.
@Alan
And here I was thinking they look like the sort of thing sold to hotel/motel chains by the pound.
What defines “kitschy”, exactly? Anything inherent in the work itself, or just the intended audience? I get a distinct whiff of elitism whenever that word shows up.
Also: four? I only saw three. The third one is the only one to give off a noticeable whiff of fascism. But boy, does that one ever. First, we’ve got the … opera house? It’s huge, monumental architecture on an inhuman scale, with these five big figures looming above anyone entering the place. It reeks of hierarchy, of some-people-are-just-plain-above-everyone-else as a philosophy.
And then there’s that square out front. Not a flower bed, fountain, or other such animated, living thing to be seen, and nowhere for the foot-weary to *sit*. Most people, given an opportunity to reshape a landscape, seem to Kenyaform it, but this place was Saharaformed instead, making a sterile desert of that expanse.
There is also no sign of older structures, of any preexisting street or small shop or old house, and via the lack of tree planters or flowerbeds, denies prior-to-human life as well. It has no past, save if those elevated figures represent historical personages, and even then, they are the architect’s vision of those personages rather than themselves or their own works. Certainly it is very selective about acknowledging any past, and determined to rewrite what little it keeps in its own words.
It’s also hostile to civil unrest or revolution, with those wide open spaces overlooked by elevated windows. Whoever controls the buildings controls the square, and by extension the public life of the city. Between that panopticon, so easily turned into a kill zone should the desire arise, and the overlooking, larger-than-life statues in five of those windows, untouchable and watching everyone who comes and goes, it’s authoritarian.
So, it’s hostile to anyone who can’t afford a car or to pay the fare for that tram; it’s hostile to non-human life as much as it is to any human frailty, such as the need sometimes to rest; it denies any future but whatever its watchers plan for it, and it does not grow out of its past, either, but has bulldozed all traces of this away and fully replaced it. Ultimately, it speaks to a deep biophobia and change-phobia common on the far right. It is a prison of an eternal present, an Orwellian repudiation of anything not of itself, and allows the intrusion of its human visitors only grudgingly; were it possible to replace them too with predictable machines incapable of any independence of thought and still preserve the machinery of the State, no doubt its architect would have done so. Failing that, he (and he is surely a he) settled for a belittling, oppressive panopticon.
It is both the fear of death and death itself; from the fear of death comes the fear of change, for are we ever quite the same person again who is touched by the outside, or has any form of intercourse? Whoever was sat in this chair 20 minutes ago is gone forever. Dead. But the denial of all change, of evolution, of adaptation, for a frozen sterile present is the final triumph of death, for without change there is no life. Change is death to any fixed version of oneself, but changelessness is death to every possible future such. Identity can be sought in a fixed snapshot, or in a continuity, a process; but those who seek it in a fixed snapshot cannot grow and will ultimately become life’s enemy. This might take the form of “great replacement” fears, or fear of sexuality, or many other forms, and always it leads to the same conclusion: death and destruction, by way of fascism. First comes the sweeping away of all of the “undesirable” elements. Then comes sterility. That sterile plaza no doubt lacks not only the homeless, but people of color, and Jews. The women are all chaperoned and modestly dressed, their scary sexuality kept carefully contained.
And then change comes anyway. It can only be dammed up, temporarily diverted. Like the Mississippi in flood, it will sooner or later overtop all levees and retake its course. In ten or twenty years that plaza is bombed rubble, a foreign army marching in and hauling down and burning the flags. If you’re lucky, it’s American and Canadian and French troops come to tear down the panopticon and rebuild a living, breathing city; if you’re unlucky, it’s the Soviets, happy with the panopticon, come only to replace the Gestapo watchers with Stasi. But one way or another, it will come.
The Shelleys understood something no fascist ever will. They aspire to be Ozymandias, and always they and their works meet the same fate in the end for all their desperation to preserve. They cannot seem to see that to preserve a thing is to kill it, if it is not already dead. To pin the butterfly into the case. The greatest threat to “the white race”, or whatever, is the very fascists who would preserve it … because they might succeed.
@ Vicky P
One of my friends has a company that kits out houses for people who want to look like they’ve got amazing taste but can’t actually be arsed shopping themselves.
She does do some fantastic stuff; but they can also supply posh looking books; by the metre.
(I’ve also had to comment on some of the artwork they supply)
Speaking of art and politics, this is the work of Lisa McNear Lombardi, and her husband.
https://www.famemagazine.co.uk/michael-vaughan-and-lisa-lombardi-cheerful-but-disturbing-art/
Lisa was quite avant-garde and boho. She left her husband and children and hung around in Europe with the art set. Eventually she married a member of “The Bradford Mafia”. (i.e. David Hockney and friends) and that’s their work above.
She disowned her children; and in her will left one of them the princely sum of $1.
That child is Tucker Carlson.
A bunch of us on Tumblr last week were reblogging a thread about the ubiquity of minimalist design, until someone pointed out that the original article was from somebody with a name like “Cultural Tutor” and his main objection was likely that modern architecture isn’t “traditional”-looking enough. (I think the rest of us weren’t objecting to minimalism itself so much as to a lack of other style options, but I felt stupid for not having spotted the dogwhistle in the first place.)
@ moon custafer
Now there’s a topic. But I shall refrain from rambling. I will just say, have you read this?
And also, if you want some ammo for the discussion…
@Alan
So buying posh-looking books is still a thing? I’ve heard (don’t know if it’s legend or history) that in the Victorian age, the newly wealthy would buy books by the yard so that the library would look “respectable.”
I admit, the Parasol family collection doesn’t look very respectable. Too many paperbacks, but at least Mr. Parasol and I have read them all. Now if we could just find a better way to organize them so that we could find any given title when we want it, but we also both have the habit of reading a book, then leaving it somewhere that is not the shelf it came from. And of course we don’t have enough bookcases.
@Alan: Oh, the style’s been around for over a century (and I think originated with TP sanatoriums, contains some subtext of it own about washing away the disease of the old ways, etc); there are ways of doing it without making everything look cold or impersonal (shoutout to Paul R. Williams). A couple of commentors suggested, however, that its current prevalence is more about making homes that will need minimal redecorating when they’re inevitably resold/rented to someone else.
@ moon custafer
It’s a fascinating topic. I’m quite a fan of brutalism; but it has to be done right. There’s a lot of interesting tales from developments around London. Trellick Tower, The Barbican etc. And not just for the architecture; there’s all the social history. And don’t get me started on London Underground designs.
We could do with Policy of Madness for this one. Has anyone heard anything from them recently?
A cousin of mine who recently finished his architecture degree is a big fan of “Eco-Brutalism” which AFAICT is classic Brutalism but with lots of plants growing on the concrete walls, for sort of a lost-city look.
@Moon Custafer
That might be my favorite architectural style ever, though I didn’t know it was a specific thing – I’ve usually seen it happen more by accident. Brutalism + lush greenery = love.
@ moon custafer & cyborgette
I love that look too. Like you say, it almost has a post apocalypse nature reclaiming vibe. Or like abandoned Meso American temples.
I would love to see more ‘vertical parks’. It’s aesthetically gorgeous, good for the environment; and, if you do it right, can actually improve the building for things like insulation and climate control.
Where is that pic from, @Alan? (is it Barcelona???) Looks amazing, I hope people live in that (I mean, offices would be great too – but for inner-city life, imagine living in a place like that instead of the usual grey boxes…)
@VickyP: If you have enough shelves, you don’t have enough books.
@GSS ex-noob
Well said.
Let us not speak of the books that have stayed in boxes unpacked since we moved in many years ago. They aren’t dead. They aren’t unwanted. They’re just resting comfortably in a closet right now.
@ opposablethumbs
It’s in Singapore. A hotel I believe. (Wasn’t Raffles in Singapore?)
In other news, my favourite take on the current political debacle here.
Ha, yes – Larry the cat is the only one able to resign with integrity. (v the shopped pics of him at a teeny-tiny lectern in Downing St., addressing journalists :-s )
Finest examples of blue-on-blue is a difficult choice with some strong contenders; it’s hard to top Zahawi blackmailing Johnson into making him Chancellor and then less than 48 hours later calling for Johnson’s resignation. Possibly the only Chancellorship in UK history ever to be measured in hours. Even so, my favourite is the fact that Gove apparently tried to pile the pressure on the Crime Minister by saying if Johnson failed to resign, then he would; and Johnson sacked him.
As I’m sure you’ve seen, Johnson’s wild scattering of cabinet positions to the few remaining pustules willing to accept them has also been likened to Caligula making his horse a general; as in the case of Trump before him, the most illuminating response I’ve seen is that in this scenario Johnson is the horse.
@ opposablethumbs
Yup. But when ministers leave their posts they get a golden parachute of 1/4th their annual salary. So that’s not bad for a few hours of not actually having to do anything.
Larry is safe though. As Chief Mouser to the Treasury he’s technically a civil servant.
@Victorious Parasol:
So buying posh-looking books is still a thing? I’ve heard (don’t know if it’s legend or history) that in the Victorian age, the newly wealthy would buy books by the yard so that the library would look “respectable.”
I can attest that the practice is real, and survived at least into the 1990’s; a thrift shop in my neighborhood, and a secondhand bookstore I once worked for, would sell Reader’s Digest Condensed Books volumes by the yard; in fact, that’s their main resale market, since they seem to be white elephants otherwise.
(They were hardbound and made for nice color blocking:
)
Larry has seen PMs come and go. He remains. He’s the mouse-catcher of the building, not some furry lackey of politicians.
@Alan: I see your Ballard and raise you this:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?801